Some links for a Thursday...

Lisa Rainsberger (#4) at 1991 Osaka Ladies' Marathon

Thanks to Down The Backstretch publisher Charlie Mahler for this first link to a story posted on GaryCohenRunning.com on former Redmond resident Lisa (Weidenbach) Rainsberger, who now does private coaching and is based in Colorado Springs.

Rainsberger finished fourth in three consecutive US Olympic Marathon Trials (1984, 1988, and 1992), making her perhaps one of the most snakebitten Olympic Trials competitors.

In this interview with Cohen, she brings up an interesting point about the 1984 US Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984, which were held in Olympia.

She says, "I had a love-hate relationship with the Olympic Trials that started back I 1980 when I was in high school and qualified for the Trials as a swimmer but it was the year of President Jimmy Carter’s Olympic boycott. At the 1984 Olympic Trials Marathon I was in third place until the 25-mile mark. The race pre-dated the use of electrolyte replacement drinks along the course and it was tough at five feet, ten inches and 130 pounds to run a marathon while only drinking water. If I knew what I know now about hydration and nutrition it would have been a whole different story."


"On a side note, the runner who placed second failed a drug test, but a lack of policy by the U.S. governing body didn’t stop her from competing in Los Angeles. She raced poorly in L.A. and shouldn’t have been representing our country due to that failed drug test."

The top three finishers in Olympia were Joan Benoit, Julie Brown & Julie Isphording. Benoit went on to win the Olympic title a few months later in Los Angeles.

You can read the full interview with Rainsberger here.

Meanwhile, javelin thrower Kara Patterson returned from two months in Europe, and writes about last weekend's IAAF/VTB Bank Continental Cup in Split, Croatia, where she finished a disappointing sixth place.

In her post, she admits that the training that she did in the run-up to the USA Championships in Des Moines was only supposed to last for about seven weeks.

"Seven weeks post-USA Championships put me right at Zurich, which is where things started to decline a little bit!"

"How cool to know why things happened the way they did, and to know that we can change plans for next summer in order to be ready to throw far when we want to. Yay! I'm excited to have real focus next year instead of going meet to meet just, you know, seeing how things go."


You can read the rest of her post here.